“Enola Holmes 2” Review

Enola Holmes 2: A thrilling Adventure about a young woman defying the odds and solving mysteries.

On October 22 Netflix released its sequel to Enola Holmes. The first Enola Holmes came out September 23, 2020, and had great success all around. The first movie is about a young girl named Enola Holmes (Millie Bobby Brown), and her search for her mother (Helena Bonham Carter) who has gone missing, even though her brothers Sherlock Holmes (Henry Cavill) and Mycroft Holmes (Sam Claflin) attempt to keep her from adventure.

Along the way, she meets Tewksbury (Louis Partridge), a boy on the run from his family. They end up fighting the people keeping Enola from her mother. In the end, it seems they develop romantic feelings for one another.

The second movie takes place from where the first one ended. Enola is opening her own detective agency and unfortunately, people don’t seem to be taking her seriously, because of her famous brother. Whenever she shares the mysteries that she has solved, they always give her brother, Sherlock, the credit.

In the second movie Enola meets a young girl named Bessie (Serranna Su-Ling Bliss). Bessie claims that her sister Sarah has gone missing and she needs Enola to help find her.

To avoid all spoilers, the summary mostly shows the main part of the beginning plot. What’s even more interesting about this movie is that one of the main characters, Sarah Chapman (Hannah Dodd), was a real person in history. Sarah Chapman was an activist who helped lead the 1888 Bryant & May Match Girls strike.

In the end, they discover who the true villain is not by pure discovery, but by confession. To be honest, discovering the villain was confusing, and very much anti- climatic. Its fun to be surprised with an unexpected twist, but the villain confesses in a very odd way, and in the end it just doesn’t match up with the rest of the story’s plot.

This is what the movie goes into detail about the most, as well as Enola, Sherlock, and Tewksbury trying to uncover who Sarah Chapman is, and the cause of the problem that makes the girls who work as matchmakers strike. This really fits into the narrative of the rest of the movie, which is about strong female characters defying the odds of their time.

Luckily this time around we see Tewksbury again, and he and Enola resume their same story from the first film. Even though he is not as present as he was in the first movie he still makes his way into the plot, even though it doesn’t really have anything to do with his besides him being part of royalty, and his connections with Enola.

Although Mycroft Holmes wasn’t in this movie, Sherlock was a major part of the storyline. He and Enola share many special bonding moments together, as she does with her mother who also returned. In the end, Enola accepts being independent without her brother, and passes on some wisdom that being alone is okay, but being lonely is not. This connects to the theme of the first movie, in which Enola has to learn to be independent without her mother.

Overall, Enola Holmes II was a sequel that most definitely lived up to the first movie by continuing important themes as well as creating and finishing different plot points that made the film more engaging.